County demands notice on medical parolees

SACRAMENTO  The state has been shipping incapacitated prisoners to San Diego County medical facilities without giving local authorities or the families of other patients any warning or opportunity to protest.

Saying these prisoners released on medical parole may be a threat to staff and patients, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis are pushing legislation to rein in the practice.

“This creates a dangerous situation where criminals are watched by medical staff instead of prison guards,” Supervisor Dianne Jacob and Dumanis said in a joint letter in support of legislation.

“This practice serves as another reckless example of the state putting our public safety at risk by shifting the burden of prisoner care to local jurisdictions in an effort to cut state costs,” the letter continued.

The county has enlisted new Assemblyman Brian Maienschein, R-San Diego, to carry a measure.

His Assembly Bill 68 would require the state to notify the county where the inmate will be sent at least 30 days before the Board of Parole Hearings takes up an application.

Maienschein said current law requires the state to notify counties where the crime first occurred when an inmate is up for medical parolee. But those counties forced to accept the medical parolee are not told of the hearing and health officials only learn when the prisoner is being prepared for the transfer.

“It’s good for law enforcement to know this person is in the region,” he said. “The person is not deemed to be a threat to public safety but at the same time law enforcement having more knowledge is better than having less.”

Ten medical parolees are cared for in San Diego County, according to the latest figures.

Before granting a request, the Board of Parole Hearings must make a number of findings. Those included determinations that the prisoner is medically incapacitated and poses no threat to public safety.

The county cites two local cases as evidence of the need for the notification legislation.

Suffering severe brain trauma, convicted burglar Peter Post was bed-bound in an El Cajon skilled nursing facility when he began committing lewd acts in front of female nurses in late 2011. Yet, the county was never told that he was going to be released there. Post was later returned to custody for violating terms of his medical parole.

Another case involved Steven Martinez, who had been convicted in San Diego of kidnapping, beating and raping a woman in San Diego in 1988.

A knife attack in prison left Martinez a quadriplegic, prompting him to file the state’s first-ever appeal for medical parole in 2011.

The previous year, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had signed legislation authorizing these early releases in rare circumstances as a cost-cutting maneuver for the cash-strapped state.

In the Martinez case, San Diego County prosecutors were able to personally protest his appeal because they were notified under the provisions of existing law that require the state to inform those in the county where the inmate had been convicted.

The Board of Parole Hearings sided with San Diego County, denying Martinez’s bid to be let out of prison. But a San Diego appellate court in November 2012 overruled the parole board.

In reviewing the need for the 2013 legislation, supervisors were told that Martinez “verbally abused and threatened the medical staff at the prison and was capable of verbally ordering crimes be committed.”

The state does cover half the costs of caring for the inmates and federal health care provides the rest. Medical parolees are also separate from the state’s ongoing cost-cutting moves to house low-level offenders in county jails.

No hearing date for the bill has been set.

Neither Gov. Jerry Brown or his Department of Corrections has taken a position on the measure.